Myth, Ritual and Religion (Vol. 1&2). Andrew Lang

and turned the men into stone";(7) and the blacks run for their lives as soon as the dog begins to speak. What it said was "Bones".

      (1) Kalewala, in La Finlande, Leouzon Le Duc (1845), vol. ii. p. 100; cf. also the Introduction.

      (2) Schoolcraft, v. 420.

      (3) See similar ceremonies propitiatory of the bear in Jewett's Adventures among the Nootkas, Edinburgh, 1824.

      (4) Brough Smyth, i. 449.

      (5) J. J. Atkinson's MS.

      (6) Sahagun, ii. viii. 250; Bancroft, iii. 111. Compare stories of women who give birth to animals in Melusine, 1886, August-November. The Batavians believe that women, when delivered of a child, are frequently delivered at the same time of a young crocodile as a twin. Hawkesworth's Voyages, iii. 756. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 17 et seq.

      (7) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 497.

      These are minor examples of a form of opinion which is so strong that it is actually the chief constituent in savage society. That society, whether in Ashantee or Australia, in North America or South Africa, or North Asia or India, or among the wilder tribes of ancient Peru, is based on an institution generally called "totemism". This very extraordinary institution, whatever its origin, cannot have arisen except among men capable of conceiving kinship and all human relationships as existing between themselves and all animate and inanimate things. It is the rule, and not the exception, that savage societies are founded upon this belief. The political and social conduct of the backward races is regulated in such matters as blood-feud and marriage by theories of the actual kindred and connection by descent, or by old friendship, which men have in common with beasts, plants, the sun and moon, the stars, and even the wind and the rain. Now, in whatever way this belief in such relations to beasts and plants may have arisen, it undoubtedly testifies to a condition of mind in which no hard and fast line was drawn between man and animate and inanimate nature. The discovery of the wide distribution of the social arrangements based on this belief is entirely due to Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, the author of Primitive Marriage. Mr. M'Lennan's essays ("The Worship of Plants and Animals," "Totems and Totemism") were published in the Fortnightly Review, 1869–71. Any follower in the footsteps of Mr. M'Lennan has it in his power to add a little evidence to that originally set forth, and perhaps to sift the somewhat uncritical authorities adduced.(1)

      (1) See also Mr. Frazer's Totemism, and Golden Bough, with chapter on Totemism in Modern Mythology.

      The name "Totemism" or "Totamism" was first applied at the end of the last century by Long(1) to the Red Indian custom which acknowledges human kinship with animals. This institution had already been recognised among the Iroquois by Lafitau,(2) and by other observers. As to the word "totem," Mr. Max Muller(3) quotes an opinion that the interpreters, missionaries, Government inspectors, and others who apply the name totem to the Indian "family mark" must have been ignorant of the Indian languages, for there is in them no such word as totem. The right word, it appears, is otem; but as "totemism" has the advantage of possessing the ground, we prefer to say "totemism" rather than "otemism". The facts are the same, whatever name we give them. As Mr. Muller says himself,(4) "every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem";(5) and he goes on to describe a totem of an Indian who died about 1793. We may now return to the consideration of "otemism" or totemism. We approach it rather as a fact in the science of mythology than as a stage in the evolution of the modern family system. For us totemism is interesting because it proves the existence of that savage mental attitude which assumes kindred and alliance between man and the things in the world. As will afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the mythologies of the civilised races. We shall examine the institution first as it is found in Australia, because the Australian form of totemism shows in the highest known degree the savage habit of confusing in a community of kinship men, stars, plants, beasts, the heavenly bodies, and the forces of Nature. When this has once been elucidated, a shorter notice of other totemistic races will serve our purpose.

      (1) Voyages and Travels, 1791.

      (2) Moeurs des Sauvages (1724), p. 461.

      (3) Academy, December 15, 1883.

      (4) Selected Essays (1881), ii. 376.

      (5) Compare Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of Mythology.

      The society of the Murri or black fellows of Australia is divided into local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and hunt over a considerable tract of country. These local tribes are united by contiguity, and by common local interests, but not necessarily by blood kinship. For example, the Port Mackay tribe, the Mount Gambier tribe, the Ballarat tribe, all take their names from their district. In the same way we might speak of the people of Strathclyde or of Northumbria in early English history. Now, all these local tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of kindred, of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of blood and common descent. That descent the groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia. The creature from which each tribe claims descent is called "of the same flesh," while persons of another stock are "fresh flesh". A native may not marry a woman of "his own flesh"; it is only a woman of "fresh" or "strange" flesh he may marry. A man may not eat an animal of "his own flesh"; he may only eat "strange flesh". Only under great stress of need will an Australian eat the animal which is the flesh-and-blood cousin and protector of his stock.(1) (These rules of marriage and blood, however, do not apply among the Arunta of Central Australia, whose Totems (if Totems they should be called) have been developed on very different lines.(2)) Clearer evidence of the confusion between man and beast, of the claiming of kin between man and beast, could hardly be.

      (1) Dawson, Aborigines, pp. 26, 27; Howitt and Fison, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.

      (2) Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia.

      But the Australian philosophy of the intercommunion of Nature goes still farther than this. Besides the local divisions and the kindred stocks which trace their descent from animals, there exist among many Australian tribes divisions of a kind still unexplained. For example, every man of the Mount Gambier local tribe is by birth either a Kumite or a Kroki. This classification applies to the whole of the sensible universe. Thus smoke and honeysuckle trees belong to the division Kumite, and are akin to the fishhawk stock of men. On the other hand, the kangaroo, summer, autumn, the wind and the shevak tree belong to the division Kroki, and are akin to the black cockatoo stock of men. Any human member of the Kroki division has thus for his brothers the sun, the wind, the kangaroo, and the rest; while any man of the Kumite division and the crow surname is the brother of the rain, the thunder, and the winter. This extraordinary belief is not a mere idle fancy—it influences conduct. "A man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same subdivision (Kroki or Kumite) with himself, excepting when hunger compels, and then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship, meaning almost a portion of themselves. To illustrate: One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (a man of the crow surname and stock), named Larry, died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong (totem) hastened his death."(1) Commenting on this statement, Mr. Fison observes: "The South Australian savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he himself is part". This account of the Australian beliefs and customs is borne out, to a certain extent, by the evidence of Sir George Grey,(2) and of the late Mr. Gideon Scott Lang.(3) These two writers take no account of the singular "dichotomous" divisions, as of Kumite and Kroki, but they draw attention to the groups of kindred which derive their surnames from animals, plants, and the like. "The origin of these family names," says Sir George Grey, "is attributed by the natives to different causes. … One origin frequently assigned by the natives is, that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very common in the district which the family inhabited." We have seen from the evidence of Messrs. Fison and Howitt